


“Hello?”

by Tzalmavet



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 00:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13822866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tzalmavet/pseuds/Tzalmavet
Summary: A phone rings while the Batter and Zacharie are spending some time together.





	“Hello?”

Zacharie and the Batter could have been in any of the zones, that day.  But the broader sense of where they were was not important, that was currently the more specific sense of their location.  The two of them had opted to spend some time in a small room, idling away until the Batter would eventually get bored and carry on with his life.  Until then, he and Zacharie lazed about in the room.

The two of them had been on the floor for nearly an hour.  Both sprawled out, backs to each other in silence.  This was how they had decided to spend the afternoon, and they were both perfectly fine with it.

Then, all of a sudden, the phone on the end table, the only piece of furniture in the room, began to ring.  The Batter cared for absolutely no one, so he stayed where he was.  Zacharie was exactly the same, except he had a sense of curiosity that overruled his apathy, and got to his feet, walking over to the phone and picking up the handset.

"Hello?" he said to the phone.  The Batter turned over, pressing his stomach against the metal floor.  Silently, he thought about how Zacharie was quite missing out on this, but was fine to continue alone a while.

Zacharie laughed, chuckling and muttering something that the Batter could not make out.  He would pause, listening carefully to the receiver, and would then laugh, and laugh, and laugh.  And he continued in that way to the phone for hours, and hours, and hours.

Eventually, the Batter turned to face the side of the room that Zacharie and the phone were in.  He saw Zacharie, nodding firmly, staring at a corner of the ceiling, and twirling the phone's cord around his fingers.  The Batter did not care about who Zacharie was talking to or why, but had just begun to feel like his time was being wasted.

The Batter sat up, "Who are you talking to?"  Zacharie stopped nodding and looked at the Batter for a moment, then looked back at the phone, and started laughing again.

The Batter stood up, "Who are you talking to?"  If Zacharie had heard the Batter, he showed no sign of it.  The Batter watched him laugh, thinking about what to do.  He stepped a little closer to Zacharie, leaning in close to his face, and asked "Who are you talking to?"

Zacharie, shoulders still shaking with laughter, leaned a little ways away from the Batter, as if to tune him out.  Never one to be ignored, the Batter made a reach for the phone in Zacharie's hands.  Zacharie curled defensively around it, cupping a hand around the receiver so that the Batter couldn't overhear anything being said.

The Batter began to pull and yank at Zacharie's arms, but they wouldn't budge.  Zacharie just kept listening to the phone and laughing, and laughing, and laughing.  "What is so funny?" the Batter asked, more than aware that he would get no response.

So then, with very little thought, the Batter instead began to pull and yank at Zacharie's neck.  Zacharie's legs flailed a bit, and his feet dug into the floor, but otherwise he didn't react at all.  The Batter's hands strangled him, but Zacharie still held tight to the phone and laughed.  Though the Batter pulled and squeezed, he couldn't get Zacharie away from the table, out of the reach of the phone's cord.

Eventually, Zacharie's laughter began to get quieter and more raspy, but did not cease until the Batter's squeezing hands had held him a bit too long and he fell dead to the floor, finally loosening his grip on the phone.  Brushing himself off, the Batter leaned down and plucked the phone from Zacharie's hand and lifted it to his ear, and said:

"Hello?"

The Batter waited for an answer.  He listened closely, but only heard a strange, artificial tone.  He waited for several seconds, and sucked in a breath to speak again, when suddenly a hot, terrible feeling struck him in the stomach.

The Batter doubled over in pain and held the phone away from his body.  His stomach felt like it was full of pins and needles and turning inside-out, but oddly enough nothing was coming up his throat.  He looked at the phone in his hand, and something black and red and thick began to drip from the holes of the phone's receiver and transmitter.

Alarmed, the Batter quickly hung up, but the feeling didn't go away, and he could still hear the strange tone singing in his ears.  Saucy liquid began oozing from beneath the phone's handset, pooling around it on the end table.  Growing dizzy, the Batter crouched down to unplug the phone, but the phone line, try as he might, couldn't be pulled from the wall jack.

The Batter's dizziness and nausea quickly overwhelmed him, and he collapsed across Zacharie's body.  The corpse underneath him was hard as stone, and a loud dial tone was all he could hear.  The liquid pouring off the end table reached the Batter's socks, and the world went dark around him as he passed out and slipped away.


End file.
